


Atalanta's Trail

by Missy



Category: John Adams (2008)
Genre: Character Study, Drama, F/M, Romance, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-04
Updated: 2010-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-10 09:27:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abigail toils on the home front while John is in Philadelphia with the Continental Congress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Atalanta's Trail

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LadyFest '10, prompt: _John Adams; Abigail Adams; if this is eden where is the apple_

The children toss in their cradle-beds, stirring Abigail from a dreamless sleep. Automatically her fingers stroke against the place where her husband should lie; a jolt of panic woke her fully. Then she remembered.

She remembers throughout the morning routine, the children's lessons and the weeding of the garden. Lettuce and potatoes grow in the hardscrabble Massachusetts soil sparingly in the late summer. She plucks them and thinks of John.

Their courtship has spanned the seasons, but she remembers him best in her father's field in July, gesturing in agitation over some thing while they walked side-by-side under the watchful eye of her elder sister. They would try to think up some small excuse to dissuade Mary and Richard from following them to Cupid's Grove and then sit beneath the apple trees, conversing.

Abigail gets her conversation from their serving woman now, and from the children who worry for their father's safety. She is composed and full of faith when confronted by them; in her letters to John her passion spills forth like lifeblood.

He tries to convince her of his love with his word; she has no doubt of that, it is the bedrock of her life, but a touch comforts better than a sentence.

At dinner they pray for their souls, eat the stew she made with her own hands; then reading by candlelight of their father's letter, months old though new to her hand. John Quincy and Nabby droop into sleep near the end of this – she prods them to go to their rooms, to change into their nightclothes.

Abigail is not claimed to easily by sleep, though she prays to attain peace. She is Atalanta, forever in the chase, distracted by a rain of golden apples that offer her an increasingly merry fate. She ultimately stays up late to address his letter by candlelight, requesting that he remember her, affirming her love. At last her mind and muscles give in to exhaustion. She touches the place he should sleep, says a prayer, and joins him once more in her dreams.


End file.
